“There is reason to expect,” says Dr. Johnson, “that as the world is more enlightened, policy and morality will at last be reconciled.”70 When this enlightened period shall arrive, we shall be approaching, and we shall not till then approach, that era of purity and of peace, when “violence shall be no more heard in our land, wasting nor destruction within our borders”—that era in which God has promised that “they shall not hurt nor destroy in all his holy mountain.” That a period like this will come, I am not able to doubt: I believe it because it is not credible that he will always endure the butchery of man by man; because he has declared that he will not endure it; and because I think there is a perceptible approach of that period in which he will say—“It is enough.”71 In this belief I rejoice: I rejoice that the number is increasing of those who are asking—“Shall the sword devour forever?” and of those who, whatever be the opinions or the practice of others, are openly saying, “I am for peace.”72
Whether I have succeeded in establishing the position that war, of every kind, is incompatible with Christianity, it is not my business to determine; but of this, at least, I can assure the reader, that I would not have intruded this inquiry upon the public, if I had not believed, with undoubting confidence, that the position is accordant with everlasting truth;—with that truth which should regulate our conduct here, and which will not be superseded in the world that is to come.
III
Observations on the Effects of War
War’s least horror is th’ ensanguin’d field.
Barbauld
There are few maxims of more unfailing truth than that “A tree is known by its fruits;” and I will acknowledge that if the lawfulness of war were to be determined by a reference to its consequences, I should willingly consign it to this test, in the belief that, if popular impressions were suspended, a good, or a benevolent, or a reasoning man would find little cause to decide in its favor.
In attempting to illustrate some of the effects of war, it is my purpose to inquire not so much into its civil or political, as into its moral consequences; and of the latter, to notice those, chiefly, which commonly obtain little of our inquiry or attention. To speak strictly indeed, civil and political considerations are necessarily involved in the moral tendency: for the happiness of society is always diminished by the diminution of morality; and enlightened policy knows that the greatest support of a state is the virtue of the people.
The reader needs not be reminded of—what nothing but the frequency of the calamity can make him forget—the intense sufferings and irreparable deprivations which a battle inevitably entails upon private life. These are calamities of which the world thinks little, and which, if it thought of them, it could not remove. A father or a husband can seldom be replaced: a void is created in the domestic felicity, which there is little hope that the future will fill. By the slaughter of a war, there are thousands who weep in unpitied and unnoticed secrecy, whom the world does not see; and thousands who retire, in silence, to hopeless poverty, for whom it does not care. To these, the conquest of a kingdom is of little importance. The loss of a protector or a friend is ill repaid by empty glory. An addition of territory may add titles to a king, but the brilliancy of a crown throws but little light upon domestic gloom. It is not my intention to insist upon these calamities, intense, and irreparable, and unnumbered as they are; but those who begin a war without taking them into their estimates of its consequences, must be regarded as, at most, half-seeing politicians. The legitimate object of political measures is the good of the people—and a great sum of good a war must produce, if it outbalances even this portion of its mischiefs.
In the more obvious effects of war, there is, however, a sufficient sum of evil and wretchedness. The most dreadful of these is the destruction of human life. The frequency with which this destruction is represented to our minds has almost extinguished our perception of its awfulness and horror. In the interval between anno 1141 and 1815, our country has been at war with France alone, 266 years. If to this we add our wars with other countries, probably we shall find that one-half of the last six or seven centuries has been spent by this country in war! A dreadful picture of human violence! There is no means of knowing how many victims have been sacrificed during this lapse of ages. Those who have fallen in battle, and those who have perished “in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction,” probably amount to a number greater than the number of men now existing in France and England together. And where is our equivalent good?—“The wars of Europe, for these two hundred years last past, by the confession of all parties, have really ended in the advantage of none, but to the manifest detriment of all.” This is the testimony of the celebrated Dr. Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester: and Erasmus has said, “I know not whether any war ever succeeded so fortunately in all its events, but that the conqueror, if he had a heart to feel or an understanding to judge as he ought to do, repented that he had ever engaged in it at all.”
Since the last war, we have heard much of the distresses of the country; and whatever be the opinion whether they have been brought upon us by
